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Certification
The concept of Certification is to guarantee minimum level of competence in a specific area. Being certified does not make anyone a better programmer, but certification helps qualify some of the candidates for a position. Certification is just one method of filtering employees.
Language certification is not the only form of certification available for the professional software developer. IEEE computing provides a generalized software certification focusing on the engineering aspects of programming. Tool vendors such as IBM also offer Websphere Studio certification.
There are many critics of certification, especially when the purpose of certification is to raise money for vendor, rather than a policing mechanism for the vendor technology.
SunMicrosystems provides seven areas of Java certification:
SCJD, SCWCD, SCBCD, SCDJWS and SCMAD require SCJP status.
Books
- Complete Java 2 Certification Study Guide, 4th Edition by Philip Heller, Simon Roberts and James Casaletto, 2004. ISBN 0782142761
- The Sun Certified Java Developer Exam with J2SE 1.4 by Mehran Habibi, Jeremy Patterson and Terry Camerlengo, 2002. ISBN 1590590309
- Sun Certified Programmer & Developer for Java 2 Study Guide by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates, 2003. ISBN 0072226846
- Java 2 Exam Cram, Second Edition by Bill Brogden, 2001. ISBN 158880139x
- Java 2: Web Developer Certification Study Guide by Natalie Levi and Philip Heller, 2002. ISBN 0782140912
- Sun Certified Enterprise Architect for J2EE Study Guide (Exam 310-051) by Paul Allen and Joseph Bambara, 2003. ISBN 0072226870
See Also
Discussion about Certification
> Being certified does not make anyone a better programmer
I beg to differ. While this may be true of certification in general, it fails to capture the distinctiveness that is Java Certification. My personal experience is that everyone I know who has done the Java Certification has said that it made them a better Java Programmer.
Consider the difference between say MCSD/MCSE and Java training. For the MCS exams the 'correct' answer is a political thing, and bears little (or in some cases no) resemblance to the actual state of the technology in question. So long as you have a vague idea of what the correct answer would be 'in an ideal world' you can easily get close to a passing mark with only passing familiarity with the actual technology. Whereas with the Java exams not only do they tell it like it is, but the questions are deliberately hard and designed to trick and trap you if you don't know how it actually works in the real world. This is a huge difference.
Ironically, it seems that in the real world the MCS[E|D] is perceived as having great value, whereas noone seems to value the Java exams.
Note that if you pass the SCJP exam for 1.2 and do not take an upgrade exam within two years, you have to qualify your SCJP certification with the JDK level of the exam. -- Main.redwolf - 20 Nov 2004
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